Hollywood Crows

FIVE

FLOTSAM AND JETSAM caught an early-evening call that they felt should have been referred to the CRO the next day. A Guatemalan woman who lived in Little Armenia complained that she couldn’t drive out of her alley early in the mornings because of all the cars parked at an auto body repair business owned by a man who she thought was Armenian. She needed to get downtown to her sweatshop job in the garment district by 7:30 A.M., but the south end of the alley was often blocked. The north end had apartment buildings on both sides filled with Latino gang members, and everyone was afraid to drive or even walk in that direction.

“This is a quality-of-life issue,” Flotsam said to the mother of five, whose English was better than most.

“I do not understand,” she said.

“We got officers who deal with this kind of thing,” Flotsam said. “They work in the Crow office.”

“Like the bird?”

“Well, yeah, same name,” Jetsam said. “See, they warn people and then write citations if they do stuff like blocking alleys in the neighborhood.”

“I can sympathize,” Flotsam said. “I mean, you can’t even use the alley because of thugs. Your kids have to bob and weave their way to school just to get through yellow tape.”

She understood the allusion to yellow tape. She’d seen plenty of it strung across crime scenes since migrating to Los Angeles.

“How do I call to this crow?” she asked.

“I’ll tell one to call you tomorrow when you get home from work,” Flotsam said. “You can tell them about the problem.”

When they cleared from that call, Jetsam decided to drive to the alley and have a look. The body shop was closed and there was only one security light on in the front of the building. Those at the rear were burned out or had been broken by vandals.

Jetsam pulled the car up near a chain-link fence where cars were stored, awaiting repair. He got out and shined his light around, lighting up empty oil drums, wooden crates, a Dumpster, and hopelessly damaged car tires and wheel rims.

“These fucking mini-lights!” he said. “If I ever get chalked because I couldn’t get enough light, it’s gonna be the police commission and the chief who really killed me. Remember that, bro, and seek revenge.” Jetsam shined his light up at the window eight feet above the alley floor and began looking for something to stand on.

“What’re you looking for anyways?” Flotsam asked, not bothering to get out of their black-and-white.

“That woman said there were lots of cars blocking the alley and I noticed that the shop didn’t seem big enough to do that kind of business.”

“So?”

“So I was wondering about the rest of the businesses in this little strip. Like, the place next door has no sign on it. I was thinking the body shop might use that part of the place to work on the cars. If they use stuff like welding torches and flammable cylinders in a space that’s only separated by a plasterboard wall from some dwelling units, there might be a fire ordinance that could be cited to close them down. See?”

“Lemme lock in on this shit,” Flotsam said, genuinely perplexed by his partner’s behavior until the answer came to him. After a moment he said, “I get it!”

“You get what?” Jetsam said, as he stood on a wooden box and then on top of an empty oil drum to shine his light into the window of the building next to the shop.

“This is all about Ronnie Sinclair!” Flotsam said. “She’s working Hollywood South now. You wanna run over there tomorrow and get some face time with the Crow sergeant and show how you’re all obsessed about quality-of-life crap. So maybe he’ll consider you next time there’s an opening. And then, if dreams really do come true, you might even get to be Ronnie’s partner. And she eventually might not find you as repulsive as she does now. Like, I’m on it, dude!”

Jetsam would have been really steamed by Flotsam’s accurate assessment of his motives, but he was too busy being surprised by the business at hand. He said, “Bro, climb on up here and look what’s inside.”

“Don’t keep me in suspense,” Flotsam said, not budging. “Enlighten me.”

“This whole place is a wide-open storage and repair area. There must be a couple thousand square feet of floor space in there.”

“So?”

“So I’m looking at six SUVs. New and almost new. A Beemer, a Benz, a Lexus, and, let’s see, I can’t tell what the others are. It’s too dark.”

“Dude, this is a body shop. Did you expect these Armenians to be storing olives and goat cheese in there, or what?”

“I’m just sayin’,” Jetsam mumbled, still peering in the window. Suddenly, he turned and said, “Bro, they ain’t Armos.”

“Okay, so what are they?”

“I can see a newspaper on a workbench right down below this window. I think it’s in Arabic. I think they’re Arabs.”

“Now I know why you don’t have the word detective on your badge, dude. News flash: We got thousands and thousands of camel fuckers in L.A. So what?”

“I know what they’re up to, bro.”

“Lemme guess. They’re al Qaeda operatives?”

“They’re repainting and selling hot SUVs. I’m calling the auto theft detail tomorrow morning soon as I get up.”

“Why don’t you go all radically CSI on me and start looking for stuff with DNA on it? I don’t mind sitting here while you sleuth around. Maybe you’ll find O.J.’s knife or Robert Blake’s gun.”

“Do you think they really could be al Qaeda?” Jetsam said.

While Jetsam was annoying his partner with his sleuthing, Ali Aziz was counting the crowd at the Leopard Lounge and ranting at his black bartenders, his white cocktail waitresses, and even his Mexican dishwashers. Ali wasn’t worried about his rant upsetting his customers. All of them were men whose rapt attention was focused on a pair of topless dancers in G-strings, writhing around metal poles while music blared from a sound system that had cost Ali $75,000, even though he’d gotten a special discount from a customer who’d needed cash prior to beginning a prison sentence for fencing stolen property.

Ali Aziz had employed all manner of bartenders, both male and female: whites, Asians, Mexicans, now two black men whom he was going to fire next week, and even a man from the Middle East. They were all thieves, Ali Aziz believed. Ali’s bartenders and his cocktail waitresses wore starched white shirts, black bow ties, and black trousers, but Ali always said that if bartenders served drinks completely naked with a manager watching them, they would find a way to steal from him.

Of course, Ali also thought that the U.S. government stole from him, as well as the state of California, as well as the city of Los Angeles. He fought back by keeping two sets of books for both nightclubs he owned, one with the real income, the other for IRS auditors. Whenever possible in years past, Ali had bought liquor from the addict burglar he knew as Whitey Dawson, whom he had met shortly after coming to America thirty years earlier, when Ali was twenty-two years old. He’d gotten word that Dawson had overdosed on heroin and died, and Ali was prepared to deal with Dawson’s protégé, Leonard Stilwell. But soon even Leonard had stopped coming.

Of course, a prosperous businessman like Ali Aziz did not trust the late Whitey Dawson or Leonard Stilwell any more than he trusted his bartenders, and far less than he trusted his estranged wife, Margot, the thought of whom filled him with rage. Ali had always made sure that any liquor that came from thieves like Whitey Dawson was picked up by a friend or an acquaintance of one of Ali’s Mexican busboys. Or by someone else not directly connected to Ali or to his businesses.

“You, Paco!” Ali yelled at a Mexican who was busy cleaning the table at the largest banquette.

The Mexican, whose name was Pedro, not Paco, had been employed by Ali for six months and said, “I come, boss.”

“Where is my goddamn key? My key ain’t on my desk!”

“I don’…I don’…” Pedro couldn’t remember the English word for comprendo, his brow knitting into furrows. He kept his eyes lowered, fixed on Ali’s diamond pinkie ring and on his huge gold watch as Ali shook a finger in the Mexican’s face.

“Do not be so stupid!” Ali said. “Key. Llave.” Then Ali muttered, “Goddamn Mexican. I speak in Spanish. I speak in English. Goddamn stupid Mexican.”

At last Pedro understood. “Boss!” he said. “Joo not geev to me. Joo geev to Alfonso.”

Ali stared at Pedro for a moment, then said, “Go back to work.”

Ali stormed back into the kitchen to scream at the sweating dishwasher, whose arms were submerged in soapy water, his head enveloped in a mist of steam. After retrieving the key to the storage room from the apologetic Mexican, and after threatening to fire him and withhold wages for incompetence, Ali returned to the bar to check the crowd again.

He grudgingly had to admire the job that Margot had done with her interior decor. The room was first-class, and well designed to accommodate as many customers as the fire inspector allowed. Ali had balked at the price she’d paid for the wallpaper, with its wine-colored swirls bleeding into earth tones. And the wine-colored carpet she’d wanted would have cost more than the silver Rolls-Royce he’d test-driven last week, so he’d overruled her and bought chocolate brown carpet at a discount price. Now that his business had improved and customers seemed happy with the refurbishing, he was glad he had listened to Margot. And he had to admit that the bitch had many talents. But he still wished that she were dead.

Leonard Stilwell had gotten fed up and quit his short-lived job at the car wash, and he hadn’t been able to set up a sting of any kind since Whitey Dawson had died. Security had tightened everywhere and Leonard Stilwell needed rock cocaine. He was lapsing into severe depression in the rat hole of a two-room apartment he rented by the week in East Hollywood. It was what the manager called a “studio apartment.” There was a room with a hide-a-bed that closed up against the wall so he could enter the kitchenette without walking across the bed. And the kitchenette was so small, an anorexic tweaker couldn’t squeeze through it without turning sideways. To make matters worse, a biker and his biker bitch were living in the apartment next door, and they’d be outside working on their chopper at all hours, revving the engine so Leonard couldn’t sleep. The dude didn’t wear any biker colors or have shit logos attached to his leather jacket, but he was big, hairy, and ugly, and Leonard was scared to say anything to him. At times like this Leonard almost wished he were back in jail.

In fact, he was so desperate he decided to go out that evening and try to game some chump at the ATM in the shopping mall. There was a market there that he’d burglarized on two occasions back when Whitey Dawson was alive and not so heroin crazed. Whitey could disarm most of the alarms they’d encounter, and he was a master with lock picks. Leonard was no good at any of it but had always been available to Whitey. Now Leonard had fallen on very hard times and been forced to become resourceful.

He’d tried an ATM trap four times and each attempt had failed, but he’d learned a few things through failure. This time Leonard made sure he had strips of black film that would be undetectable when pressed against the black slot reader at an ATM. He folded over the ends of the film and attached glue strips on the folded portions. What he’d failed to do last time, he corrected by cutting slits on the film so the card didn’t get kicked back out the slot by the mechanism.

It was getting close to the hour when most of the stores were closing in Hollywood, so he didn’t waste time. He dressed in a clean Aloha shirt, reasonably clean jeans, and sneakers, in case he had to beat feet in a hurry. He drove his old Honda to the mall parking lot, leaving the car near enough to the ATM for a fast exit but not so close that a witness would see him jumping into it. He strolled to the ATM and pretended to be inserting a card to make a transaction. Instead he inserted the trap into the slot and pressed hard on the glue strips on the upper and lower lip of the card reader. Then he retreated and waited.

An elderly woman approached the ATM holding a child by the hand, probably the woman’s grandson, by the looks of them. They appeared to be Latinos, and Leonard cursed his luck. If they were illegal aliens who didn’t speak enough English to give up the PIN, it wasn’t going to work. But on second thought, they were too well dressed to be illegals, and it gave him hope.

The woman inserted her card, but nothing happened. She punched in her PIN and waited. Still nothing happened. She looked at the boy, who Leonard guessed was about ten years old. Then Leonard strolled closer and heard them speaking a foreign language that wasn’t Spanish.

Leonard pulled out an old ATM card he carried for this game, made sure that they saw it, and said, “Excuse me, is there something wrong with the machine?”

The boy said, “The card is stuck inside. It won’t come out.”

“Lemme try it,” Leonard said. “I’ve had this happen to me.”

The woman looked at Leonard and he gave her his biggest freckle-faced, blue-eyed, reassuring smile. She said something to the boy in that strange language and the boy answered her.

Up close, while he was trying to sell Leonard Stilwell to them, she didn’t look so old, maybe the same age as his mother, who would be fifty-eight if she were alive. And up close this woman looked smart. And wary.

“Where’re you from?” Leonard asked the boy.

“My grandmother is Persian,” the boy said. “I am American.”

He should’ve known. They were all over Iran-geles. And he’d never met a poor one, so he was feeling pretty stoked when he said, “See, I know what to do to get your card back. You punch in your PIN number at the same time that I press ‘cancel’ and ‘enter.’ Then the card should just pop out.”

The boy spoke again to the woman, and she reluctantly moved aside for Leonard, who stepped up and put his fingers on the “cancel” and “enter” keys. She looked at him and he smiled again, trying not to swallow his spit. When he did that, his oversized Adam’s apple bobbed, a sure sign of nerves.

“We have to time this right,” he said to the boy. “Tell her she has to put in her PIN number now.”

Instead, it was the boy who moved next to Leonard. He said, “I can do it. I’m ready.”

“Go,” Leonard said, and he watched the boy punch the five digits as Leonard pressed the “cancel” and “enter” keys.

And then Leonard stepped back, scratched his head theatrically, making dandruff flakes appear on his bird’s nest of rusty red hair, and said, “I’m sorry, it’s always worked before. Can’t help you, I guess.”

Leonard shrugged at the woman and, lifting his hands palms up, turned and walked toward the parked cars, where he crouched behind the first row and watched them. The woman and boy conversed for a moment and then went inside the store while Leonard sprinted to the ATM machine, carefully lifted the folded tips of the film, gently pulled, and captured the ATM card. Then he punched in the PIN, took a chance on asking for $300, the maximum daily withdrawal allowed by the bank whose name was on the card, and jackpot!

Fifteen minutes later, Leonard Stilwell was parking in the pay lot closest to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, not even pissed off by the exorbitant parking fee because he had three bills in his kick. He was looking for Bugs Bunny, not the tall Bugs Bunny who often showed up on Friday night, but the short Bugs Bunny who always kept a stash of rocks inside his bunny head as he hopped around in his rabbit suit with a big foam-rubber carrot in his paw, saying, “What’s up, doc?” to every tourist with a camera who got within ten yards of him.

The Street Characters were always out in numbers on soft summer nights like this one. He saw Superman, Batman, Porky Pig, and SpiderMan, one of several, in his predatory pose with one knee raised, looking more like a bird than a spider. Summer nights like this, when the smog conditions created a low sky, cutting heaven down to size, made people feel that paradise could be found right here on Hollywood Boulevard. They made this a magical place for anyone with hopes and dreams.

Leonard Stilwell, who knew something about Hollywood magic, watched an intent tourist with a purse dangling from a strap over her shoulder snap a photo of her husband, who was posing with Catwoman. This, while a lean and nimble teenage boy expertly opened her purse and removed her wallet, disappearing into the crowd before she’d even asked Catwoman to pose for one more.

When it was time to pay the amazon for the photo, the woman said, “Oh, Mel! Melvin! My wallet’s gone!”

Leonard hoped he’d never have to resort to the risky trade of purse and pocket picking, and as he sidled through the throngs, he heard Catwoman say, “I hope you don’t think I dress up and pose for free, Melvin. Nobody got your wallet, did they?”

When Leonard saw the Hulk, he was hopeful. He knew that the Hulk was a pal of Bugs Bunny because he once saw them leave together in the same car. But the Hulk was very busy at the moment with no less than six Asian tourists lining up to take photos with him. Ditto for Mr. Incredible, Elmo, and even Count Dracula, whose blood-dripping leer was too scary for photos with little kids.

Then Leonard spotted him. Bugs Bunny was doing a double shoot with the Wolf Man, both of them sandwiching an obese, fifty-something woman wearing a sequined “I Love Hollywood” baseball cap, her chubby hands caressing the heads of both Street Characters.

When Bugs had collected his tip from the woman, Leonard approached him and whispered in a two-foot ear, “I need some rock.”

“How much you got?” Bugs said.

“I can spend two bills. You good with that?”

“Good as gold, dude. I got some rock, and some ice-that’s-nice if you wanna do crystal. Wait one minute and follow me into the Kodak Center. I gotta take care of Pluto, then you.”

When Leonard looked back on that moment later in the evening, he thought it must have been his sixth sense as a burglar that saved him. All those years watching, waiting, studying people. Asking himself things like, Is that greaser looking at me the way one of the 18th Street crew would look at me? Or the way an undercover cop would look at me? Or, why is that nigger hooker working this corner tonight, when I never saw her or any hooker here before? Did that fucking little junkie from Pablo’s Tacos tell the cops that I’d be taking off his boss’s store tonight with the alarm code he gave me? Is that sneaky whore really a cop, or what?

Leonard did not like the look of the fat tourist in a new white tee with the Hollywood sign emblazoned across the front and back. Leonard didn’t like his L.A. Dodgers baseball cap either. It was too well worn to belong to an out-of-towner. The bottom-heavy guy looked like he was trying too hard to appear touristy, and he wasn’t quite fat enough for Leonard to say he couldn’t be a cop.

Leonard stayed far back and was one hundred feet away when he spotted Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse’s dog Pluto, their huge heads under their arms, standing outside a restroom. He saw the buy go down. And he saw the fat guy take off his Dodgers cap. And Leonard knew that was a signal, for sure.

The fat guy ran straight at them, and three other undercover cops came at them from other directions. Bugs Bunny tried to dump the meth from his head by tipping it upside down. Pluto took the rock cocaine he’d bought and threw it backward across the floor.

The fat guy pulled a pistol from under his tee and yelled, “Police! Drop your heads and raise your paws!”

So far, Ronnie Sinclair and Bix Ramstead had experienced an uneventful ten hours. In furtherance of their quality-of-life mission, they’d been involved in crackdowns on some of the nightclubs on Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards that were generating numerous complaints from other businesses and residents in the area. Nightclub customers parked wherever they found curb space, ignoring the color of curbs or whether portions of their cars might extend into the driveways of residential property. The nightclub patrons, especially those who frequented the topless clubs where booze was sold, also urinated and vomited on sidewalks and in planted areas and threw trash anywhere that was handy.

Those who preferred all-nude dancers would emerge with more sobriety, since ordinances prohibited booze to be served in those clubs, but the more enterprising customers found ways to flavor their soft drinks and setups with secreted containers of liquor. Some of the customers went so far as to make frequent trips to the restroom, where they’d withdraw plastic bottles of spirits from under their clothing and fill their mouths before returning to their tables, then spit it into their half-empty soft drinks. Bolder ones just poured it under the table into the setups. Still others just forgot about booze and ingested or snorted other drugs, which did the trick well enough.

The vice unit would work these clubs and cite or arrest for all sorts of violations, from prostitution to alcoholic beverage violations, but Ronnie and Bix were attending to the needs of the neighbors. In the short time she’d been a Crow, Ronnie was already getting to know the roster of chronic complainers by name. One of these was Mrs. Vronsky, who owned a twenty-nine-unit apartment building near the Leopard Lounge, one of the clubs that used the word class in all of its commercials.

“Officer Ramstead, thank you for being so prompt,” the old woman said in slightly accented English when they found her standing in front of her building. She was in her mideighties, short, still full-figured, her white hair coiffed, and she wore slacks with a matching jacket that Ronnie thought would exceed her own budget.

“Of course, Mrs. Vronsky,” Bix said. “I’d like you to meet one of our new community relations officers. This is Officer Sinclair.”

“Very nice to meet you, dear,” Mrs. Vronsky said, then turned to Bix. “I have asked that man Mr. Aziz a thousand times to tell his employees not to park in our spaces here, but when they see a parking space open, they grab it. And then my tenants come home at midnight after getting off the swing shift, and what happens?”

“You have to call Hollywood Station to have them cited or towed,” Bix said sympathetically. “I do understand, Mrs. Vronsky.”

“I’ve been patient, Officer Ramstead,” she said, her pale eyes watery. “But the man ignores my calls.”

“We’ll just have to keep citing and towing, won’t we?” Bix said, patting the old woman gently on the shoulder. “But for now we’ll go have a talk with him.”

“Thank you, Officer Ramstead,” she said. “The next time I see you I shall have some of my homemade piroshki. Just the way you like it.”

“Oh, thank you, Mrs. Vronsky,” Bix said. “Officer Sinclair is in for a treat.”

When they were walking toward the front door of the Leopard Lounge, Ronnie said, “The look that old lady was giving you said, If only I were forty years younger. As it is, she’d gum you to death given half a chance.”

Bix smiled and said, “It’s just as easy to be patient with them. Last year she donated a thousand dollars to the L.A. Police Memorial fund along with a thank-you to ‘that nice Officer Ramstead at Hollywood Station.’ The boss gave me an attaboy for that. Wait’ll you meet Mrs. Ortega. She’s Puerto Rican and always makes me sit down and eat some baked fish and rice. And she never fails to suck the eyeballs out of the fish head.”

“Yikes!” Ronnie said, then followed Bix through the darkened doorway into the nightclub, finding the Leopard Lounge to be more posh than she’d imagined.

A burly Latino bouncer nodded at the uniformed cops and stepped aside when they entered. There were three bartenders pouring drinks with both hands, and a busboy was running trays of dirty glasses through swinging doors into the kitchen. The place was dark, but light enough that all customers and their tableside activities could be monitored by undercover cops as well as by the bouncer. The banquettes looked comfortable and the tabletops were clean, thanks to Latino busboys in white shirts and bow ties, working hard.

Ronnie was surprised by how pretty the cocktail waitresses were, and the two girls dancing onstage were knockouts. One of them looked to be part Asian and part white, her glossy hair hanging down nearly to her G-string as she gyrated under strobe lights.

A busty cocktail waitress walked toward the cops, smiled, and said, “Table for two, Officers?”

“I gotta warn you, I don’t like tropical toys in my mai tais,” Bix said, smiling back at her. “Is the boss around?”

“He’s in his office. Just a minute, I’ll tell him you’re here.”

She was gone for a moment, returned, and said, “You can go in.”

Ronnie noticed the cocktail waitress giving Bix the big eye when they squeezed passed her in the narrow corridor leading to the office, but he didn’t seem to notice. Ronnie had decided by now that Bix was the elusive Monogamous Male Cop, a creature she thought was extinct, if it had ever existed in the first place.

Ali Aziz was sitting at his desk, which was covered with file folders, bills, and photos of prospective dancers, most of them topless. He was yelling in Arabic at someone on the phone. When he looked up at them, he forced a polite smile and motioned them to the two client chairs.

Ronnie thought the office was very nice, not at all what she’d expected. The wall coverings were subtle, mostly pale colors that complemented the earth tones in the carpeting, and drapes that concealed the single small window facing the alley. The only bling was on the person of Ali Aziz himself, who wore a creamy silk blazer with a monogrammed pocket, a black shirt and matching black trousers, a gold Rolex, and pinkie rings on both hands. He was middle-aged, balding, swarthy, and wasn’t likely to get invited to the Jonathan Club downtown, she thought. But he’d fit in okay on the Nightclub Committee of the Community Police Advisory Board.

When Ali Aziz hung up the phone, he stood and reached across the desk to shake hands with both cops. He was several inches shorter than Bix and looked up with all of the cordiality he could muster, saying, “Welcome, Officers. I hope there is nothing wrong? We are friends of Hollywood Station. I am knowing your captain well, and each year I give from my heart to the Children’s Holiday Party and the Tip-A-Cop fund-raiser.”

“It’s the same complaint, Mr. Aziz,” Bix said.

“Parking?” With his accent he pronounced it barking.

“Yes, parking.”

“Fucking Mexicans!” Ali Aziz said, then looked at Ronnie and said, “Sorry. I am sorry, Officer. I have so much anger with my Mexicans. I shall fire them. They do that illegal parking. I am sorry for my rude mouth.”

Ronnie shrugged and Bix said, “We wouldn’t like to get anybody fired. We just want your employees to stay out of the parking places belonging to the apartment building across the street. Even though the spots look empty, people who work late hours come home to find your employees’ cars in their spaces.”

“Yes, yes,” Ali said. “The old Russian lady, she is right. She calls me all the time. I have police coming here all the time. I do not mind. I wish for my customers to see the police here. They know this is a respectable club. But I am sorry for you to waste your time. I shall fix this problem. I am going to send flowers to the old Russian lady. Do you need money for anything? I shall give you some cash for the-how you call it?-Pals Program.” He turned the p into a b again.

“No cash,” Bix said, standing up. “If you like, you can make a donation by check to the Police Activity League.”

“I shall do that tomorrow, god willing,” Ali said, standing to shake hands.

Ronnie was looking at the framed photos on a shelf over a big-screen TV. Three were studio shots of a beautiful boy, one taken when he was about two and another when he looked to be about five years old, wearing a suit, white shirt, and necktie in both photos. The third studio photo was of the boy posing next to his mother, he wearing a blazer and tie, she a basic black, V-neck dress with only a string of pearls hanging at her throat. She was a striking beauty, with hair the color of, what? Golden chestnut, maybe, full and heavy hair that any woman would die for.

Ronnie carefully touched the frame and said, “Your family is very beautiful.”

“My little son,” Ali said, smiling genuinely for the first time. “My heart. My life. My little Nicky.”

“Your wife should be in movies,” Ronnie said. “Don’t you think, Bix?”

“Uh-huh,” Bix said, hardly glancing at the photo.

Ali’s smile turned sour then and he said, “We are in a divorce battle.”

“Oh, sorry,” Ronnie said.

“No problem,” Ali said. “I shall obtain my son from her. I have the best divorce lawyer in all Los Angeles.”

They said their good-byes, and when they left the nightclub, Bix said, “So what’s your opinion of Ali Aziz?”

“I wouldn’t wanna work for him,” she said.

“Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth when he’s talking to cops,” Bix said.

“Please,” Ronnie said, “make that nonfat yogurt.”

As they were getting in their car to go end-of-watch, she said, “He won’t be a problem for long. That dude’s so golded up, he’ll probably drown in his pool someday if he goes in the deep end.”

And that’s how their uneventful watch would have ended if they had not driven to the station by way of Sunset Boulevard. Traffic was only moderate that evening, but Sunset was blocked at Vine Street by a confusing flare pattern that a motorist had placed. They saw a black-and-white that had been speeding north on Vine Street come screeching to a stop at the intersection. Bix turned on the light bar and drove west in the eastbound lane, turning south on Vine, and there it was: a major traffic collision.

“The TC must’ve just happened,” Ronnie said, as two cops from Watch 3 were running from their shop to a flattened old Chevy Caprice that had rolled more than once after having been slammed broadside by a two-ton flatbed truck that had blown the traffic light while racing southbound, driven by a teenage driver with a cell phone glued to his ear. The kid was bleeding from facial lacerations and was leaning against a door that was folded like a wallet from the force of the collision.

Bix leaped out and ran to the old car, Ronnie following. And one of the young Watch 3 cops yelled to them, “Two RA’s on the way! There’s a woman and kid in there! They’re bleeding bad and we can’t get them out!”

The other cop, a bigger man, was kicking at the jammed rear door of the Caprice where they saw a child’s head inside, gashed open from the crown to the forehead, blood running across her face from deep channels that had been opened to the bone.

“God!” Ronnie said. “God almighty!”

And she began kicking the door also, after the big cop stopped and drew his baton. He tried using it as a pry, trying to muscle open the door while yelling to his partner, “Get me a tire wrench! Anything to pry with!”

Bix could see through the shattered glass that the Asian woman behind the wheel was dead. Her chest had been crushed by the steering column and she stared lifelessly at the black sky through what was left of the roof.

Ambulance sirens were getting closer and Bix heard several voices shouting, and then he saw something move. He shined his light inside and realized that another child had been in the backseat of the car.

“There’s another kid in there!” he yelled, just as the big cop succeeded in prying the rear door open, and Ronnie saw clearly that the little girl’s shattered skull was attached to her neck only by a few shredded knots of red, slimy tissue.

“God almighty!” she repeated and ran around the car to Bix and the other child he had found, hoping that this one was alive.

Bix, his mini-flashlight on the asphalt, was down on his knees, crawling under the car, trying to lift the portion of wreckage that had the child pinned. Ronnie could hear him grunting and saw him lifting with his back, and when she shined her light under the car, she lit the face of a four-year-old girl who turned out to be the second daughter of young Cambodian immigrants who had been in Hollywood for nearly five years.

The child’s body was twisted and bloody, but her face and head were unmarked. She had a delicate, very pale beauty, and Ronnie crawled under the wreckage to help Bix try to lift the twisted metal.

It was then that the thing happened, the thing that Ronnie knew she’d remember for the rest of her career. Perhaps for the rest of her days. The little girl opened her eyes and looked directly into the straining face of Bix Ramstead, who had at last raised the chunk of wreckage high enough for Ronnie to pull her free.

Just before Ronnie grabbed her, the child said to Bix, “Are you my angel?”

Controlling his labored breathing, Bix managed to say, “Yes, darling, I am your angel.”

When they got back to Hollywood Station, Bix changed out of his uniform much faster than Ronnie did. When she left the women’s locker room she saw him sprinting across the parking lot to his minivan, and she was pretty sure she knew where he was going.

After Ronnie arrived at work the next morning, she learned that the child had survived the ambulance ride to Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center but died in the ER moments before her angel came running to her side.